Serious incidents between pupils in the school holidays

[Foxesandsquirrels]

Out of curiosity, how do schools go about dealing with serious incidents in the school holidays? As an example, things like serious fights between pupils, pupils being caught shoplifting, arrested etc. Things that would get you, at the very least, some sort of suspension in term time. I don't expect schools to sort this out, but this sort of thing ends up getting dragged into the school eventually. Do they just come back in Sept to deal with the collateral damage? Do social services take over or is there some sort of DSL on duty the whole time?

Yh I'm finding some of the replies a bit strange tbf. I'm going to take on board what the DSLs and heads have said. I have even more respect for them. What relentless jobs.

The thing about safeguarding is that it's not often "massive" issues. Yes, you do get your huge issues but for many children it's a series of small issues flagged up one at time over a period of days/weeks/month. Any one of these incidents (or even 2/3/4 of them) on their own wouldn't really the threshold for intervention but when they accumulate they do reach it which is why it's so important to always report concerns, even if they seem minor. The fundamental principle of school safeguarding policy is that if you have a concern, no matter how minor it seems, you pass it on.

My mind is boggling at the idea of school pupils fighting or shoplifting at any time, never mind in their uniforms.

Why? They're fairly common activities for more than a few teens. Hormones, peer pressure, lack of emotional regulation, boredom, acting out, and so on can cause them to make questionable choices such as shoplifting or starting fights.

I'm also interested, I've worked in different local authorities and it's never been as @kiv describes.

My mind is boggling at the idea of school pupils fighting or shoplifting at any time, never mind in their uniforms

@floodywell but why?

At the school where I worked most recently, senior management didn’t all take their holidays at the same time in case of a really major incident like the school burnt down or a pupil died, but I don’t think they would intervene in the incidents you have suggested.

Exactly. This is why I was interested in how this gets handled in the long holidays as I can see a gaping hole emerging and kids falling through the cracks. I was hoping there is some sort of seamless social services takeover but alas it is still all on the school.

But how would you know unless you were senior management?

I’m on SLT and although not the main DSL I do pick up some stuff. As a rule, we tend not to do the meetings for families where lots of services are already involved during the holidays. We feel that in those cases there’s enough people involved and they all know what’s happening for the family and that it’s the summer holidays so we do hand things over to them for a few weeks.

If an emergency or new situation came in, then we would deal with it, or at least make sure that any relevant services are involved. Unfortunately this means that there’s never really a break. I go on holiday at the weekend but will check my email throughout, just in case (not all for safeguarding stuff). It means you never really get a break and completely switch off.

You've lived a very sheltered life if you can't think of any reason why kids would get up to any of those activities.

Sounds completely unsustainable. I'm so sorry. The kids are lucky to have you but my goodness what about your own kids and family? What an awful set up.

DSL is always still available in school holidays but wouldn't normally do anything unless needed. Eg it's come to attention of school someone is self harming, sending nudes or having serious mental issues. Fights out of school won't be dealt with in my experience.

Which is why DSLs tend to be ( at least in Primary) Heads or deputy heads as they work through most holidays anyway ( well, teachers do too but in their own time and place😁)

@Foxesandsquirrels in some ways it’s not too bad, as usually it’s just a few emails and passing them on to relevant people so someone is dealing with it. I could set an out of office but all it would to is alert the sender, they likely wouldn’t contact anyone else.

i just accept it as part of the job. I wish it wasn’t but I can’t imagine not checking my emails and thinking ‘maybe I could have done something’.

I didn't know heads work through the holidays tbf.

I think your last sentence really resonated with me. What if I could've done something. That level of pressure is just not sustainable. There should be a point where you switch off in all jobs, especially when it's dealing with kids and vulnerable ones at that. It's so easy to get attached to them and makes it difficult to keep healthy boundaries, especially when they seek other adults as parental figures.

I was middle management (head of year) and so if it involves my year group I would have heard about it.

Fair play but that's not the whole school really. What year was you HOY for out of interest?

I think there is a confusion in this thread between ‘consequences / punishments in school for out of school events’ (visible) and ‘schools being informed of / being part of the team involved in discussing events with serious safeguarding implications’ (often invisible).

IME school staff - DSL, Head if different, some SLT - will be highly involved in the ‘invisible’ work (in the absence of anyone else, tbh) but there won’t be a ‘visible’ consequence in school for holiday time crimes or misdemeanours.

A bit like in lockdown, where ime schools / teachers were hugely involved in ‘invisible’ safeguarding / food / welfare work (often because other services simply didn’t see children or families, and often involving home contact / home visits by school staff that was not usually in their remit) but weren’t open for their ‘visible’ work if educating everyone on site.

IME school staff - DSL, Head if different, some SLT - will be highly involved in the ‘invisible’ work (in the absence of anyone else, tbh) but there won’t be a ‘visible’ consequence in school for holiday time crimes or misdemeanours.
That's my experience too. There's a lot of invisible work that goes on behind the scenes with the head, SLT and relevant pastoral leaders as appropriate.
Often it doesn't translate into school issued sanctions for behaviour.

The information sharing is separate from the behaviour systems.

Even within schools I don't think people understand the pressure until they've been the ones trying to get emergencies passed onto the relevant services before a holiday. It was an eye-opening step up the first time I experienced it.

Yes definitely I think I phrased my OP completely wrong. I meant who does the invisible work when schools are closed.

@LolaSmiles I think I really had a shock this term when I was supporting the school in trying to get agencies to take DDs situation seriously and chasing school referrals. The threshold to all agencies that should be supporting schools is so insanely high, the vast majority fall onto the school. Even social workers aren't that helpful, the LAC often have a new one by the time the new half term comes, sometimes week on week.
I was just curious how this works in the holidays, and it sounds like it works the same, without the physical presence of kids in school, which is really quite heartbreaking. SLTs role is relentless, they really need the break.

Leadership members just get the statutory holiday entitlement -28 days I think!- but pretty much every one I know still checks messages/ emails etc during this time.